Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Lets be fair this is not 12 Angry Men or Citizen Kane or Apocalypse Now. You aren't going to learn anything watching this film or gain very much but you are going to have a good time. This falls firmly into B movie category and there's nothing wrong with B movies. Its virtually a grindhouse movie. It feels like a Tarantino movie, i'm fairly surprised his sticky fingers aren't involved with it in some way. Its rattles along at a cracking pace vomiting (in a good way) out horror movie clichés as it goes and some of them are so well done but so stupid they are laugh out loud charming. Its a sweet little movie. Adorable in what its trying to do. Because its not trying to do anything. Its not post modern with annoying teens dissecting horror movies working out how to cheat the system. Although one of the characters knows an awful lot about Mexican wrestling and the killer would be improbably old.It is what it is, a cheap, cobbled together horror film full of plot holes that, so long as you turn your brain off and your expectations down, you'll have a good time watching.

A group of friends, in Mexico for a porn shoot, make the mistake of stopping into a ghost town, hunted by a luchadore(..some kind of experiment made from the bodies of other wrestlers to compete for his country in the Olympics of '68, considered a failure after attacking opponents in matches)who seeks to attain their faces(..the flesh from a face is considered a mask, in tradition, to remove the mask of your opponent is the highest form of humiliation)after subduing and harming them. Will any of them be able to remove his mask, once and for all retiring the psychotic luchadore? As lame as the synopsis would suggest with characters you could care less about. Built as a horror comedy with the camera lovingly capturing actress Leyla Milani's ass, in tight shorts(..or, eventually, panties) as she flees from her pursuer. It's hard to feel sorry for a group who defy a warning from a local, entering a forbidden town with a notorious history, La Sangre de Dios. Rey Misterio Sr(..a real luchadore, and father to the legendary Rey Misterio Jr)stars as El Mascarado, the luchadore who attacks the group, often growling as he follows after(..and vanquishes) them. Margaret Scarborough is quite yummy as Milani's lover Debbie. A nice role for Jeremy Radin as a nerdy camera operator, Steve, who services the plot as a fan of Lucha libre with knowledge of El Mascarado, understanding Spanish, informing others that to defeat him is to remove his mask. The violence does get graphic as El Mascarado throws his victims around like a rag doll(..Steve puts on his mask and charges towards him, with the result far from pretty)before breaking an arm or back, prying away their face flesh after he's through. The Mexican village is a great setting for a horror film and the premise of characters finding themselves lost in the middle of nowhere, in desert country, where help is far, far away, is a viable one, but there's no suspense or atmosphere..in a setting that should be spooky, brimming with menace, you can only fault the execution of a film such as this. It's also a bit too goofy, even with such a preposterous premise as this one has..but, I have a feeling many will judge this less harshly considering the fact that the filmmakers were never intending to create a scary horror film in the first place.

El Mascarado Massacre, more commonly known under the title Wrestlemaniac, starts as six friends are driving across Mexico to get to a location to shoot a porn film. The films actor & director Alphonse (Adam Huss), the cameraman Steve (Jeremey Radin), some bloke called Jimbo (Zack Bennett) & three porn actresses Daisy (Catherine Wreford), Dallas (Leyla Miliani) & Debbie (Margaret Scarborough) (yeah yeah make up your own 'Debbie does Dallas' porn jokes...) are forced to stop at a ghost town called La Sangre de Dios, or The Blood of Christ after their van breaks down. Since Steve is a geek he knows that La Sangre de Dios is a town of legend, a town where El Mascarado (Rey Misterio Jr.) the most fearsome, brutal & notorious Mexican wrestler is thought to reside. The six filmmakers quickly realise that the legends are true & that El Mascarado doesn't like visitors, in fact he likes to wrestle them into submission & then rip their faces off...Originally worked on under the title The Mexican Porn Massacre which was at some point retitled to El Mascarado Massacre before some too clever for his own good marketing executive got hold of it & changed the title for a third time to the wonderful pun Wrestlemaniac, give that guy who thought it up a banana! Edited, co-executive produced, written & directed by Jesse Baget this is your average teen slasher flick but one also to say it's a particularly silly teen slasher. The basic idea behind El Mascarado Massacre is that back in the 60's some scientists created the ultimate wrestler so Mexico could win the Olympics from the body parts of other wrestlers but the experiment went wrong & the thing turned into an unstoppable killer whose only weakness is that he has to abide by the rules of Mexican wrestling when killing his victims! If he was created in the 60's he'd be in his 70's at least now, what did he eat in that ghost town for all those years? To be as big & beefy as that requires a lot of food. Why was there still electricity in the town? What did Mascarado do there exactly for all that time? Didn't he like get bored & want to move on? A totally deserted ghost town probably isn't the most exciting place in the world to be stuck for 40 odd years on your lonesome is it? Also where did Mascarado learn to drive exactly? If you can overlook the silliness of the central concept then to be fair to it El Mascardo Massacre isn't the worst slasher out there, at a little over 80 minutes at least it's short, there's one or two pretty gory moments, some of the dialogue is quite punchy while porn director & super stud Alphonse is around & it moves along at a good pace. It does end rather abruptly though, just as the film gets down to the last surviving teen & I expected a long drawn out stalk n'slash sequence of cat & mouse between her & Mascarado it suddenly finishes. Short & to the point even if it is rather silly.Director Baget does a reasonable job & the film actually looks like it was made by professionals, by people who actually knew what they were doing which is not always the case with low budget shot on a camcorder & edited on a home PC horror these days. The gore & violence is odd, the first two murders happen off screen & we don't see a single drop of the red stuff but then we get a long scene where Mascarado beats a guy up, smashes his face on some stone work making his teeth fall out & then rip his face off. The rest of the film is also mixed as there are some graphic gore scenes while at other times it feels like the makers are going out of their way not to show you anything. There's a couple of gory impalement's, a wall full of ripped off faces, some more graphic face ripping & some more wrestling type fights. If you are interested keep watching as the end credits roll since there's some on the set outtake footage of star Jeremey Radin singing some songs to the crew about the films story that they seem to find very funny even though they aren't.With a supposed budget of about $850,000 El Mascarado Massacre was actually lower budget than I thought, considering this came in at less than a million it's surprisingly well made with good production values. Although set in Mexico it was apparently shot in California. The acting is pretty good for a film of this type, Adam Huss certainly puts in a spirited performance as the sex mad porn director while Rey Misterio Sr. is a real Mexican wrestler & has won all sorts of titles & makes his feature film debut here.El Mascarado Massacre turned out much, much better than I had anticipated, it still ain't no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but it passes the time harmlessly enough & at least it's short. Silly but fun teen slasher flick with better productions values than usual.

Insane Mexican wrestler brutalizes people before ripping their faces off with his bare hands. Really, nobody watching this expects Tolstoy. But for what it is, a lowbudget slasher flick, it's top stuff.First of all, the premise. Part homage to the ridiculous luchadore movies of Santo, Blue Demon et al, it's hilarious on paper. Yet in choosing Rey Misterio Sr. for the role, they've made an inspired choice. He's not a 7' monster who towers unbelievably over the protagonists, but a short, squat guy who looks like he really could snap your spine with his bare hands. Clever lighting make his mask highly creepy on top of that, leading to a genuinely menacing presence.Gorewise, this is a movie about faces being torn off. It's the movie's tagline, it's even on the front of the DVD case and the promo posters. You're teased with it, and when you finally see it, man it's nasty. Double thumbs up to the effects team, peeled faces haven't looked this good since Texas Chainsaw, though at a couple of specific points the blood seemed a little too light in tone and too opaque. It's highlighted further by the contrast with the rest of the movie, when it's that wonderous slick dark blood you expect from a horror these days. El Mascarado himself is pretty much permanently covered in great-looking gore. I'm surprised this movie walked away with only a 15 rating in the UK.The sets are really something else. Much of the time they're really bordering on the kind of quality expected from a bigbudget Hollywood horror. They get re-used with some consistency, but then considering the setting is a small Mexican town, that's somewhat forgivable.Acting, there's not much to say except that it's great. The characters start out as stereotypes, but they're really brought to life by a surprisingly solid cast. Unusual for the genre, but certainly not unwelcome. Troma this ain't.The quality of the directing is a touch inconsistent. Sometimes it feels like a homage to other B-grade slashers, with cheesy PoV shots, camera blur, and other fun clichés, but at other times there's proof that these guys are capable of taking it to another level of quality, with some great twists and unexpected, original scenes. Oh, and some gratuitous softcore thrown in too, and played entirely for laughs, which actually works. If they'd stuck with one direction or the other, this would have turned out a cult classic. A little too scary to be funny, a little too funny to be truly scary.Sound is the real department where issues arise. The music is fantastic, with authentic Mexican tunes on the DVD menu and across the opening credits, and the general score is mood-enhancing without being intrusive. But this is some atrocious dubbing. A constant re-use of El Mascarado growling, regular tinny sound effects, and people sounding far off and distant when they're supposed to be 3 feet offscreen, it's a bit of a shame, the sound lacks the kind of punch the action deserves.Still, this is definitely one of the better slashers I've seen in the past few years. It's silly fun in parts, crafts some great chilling moments and has more than it's fair share of gorebuckets thrown in. And really, who can resist seeing Rey Misterio Sr. as a murderous psychopath? If you like slashers, see this movie. I give it 8/10.